Go native with your plants to go green

Indigenous life ensures thriving life for all

When Suzy Winterble and her husband built their house in Yorktown in 2007, they decided to go native — with the landscaping.

It's not that Winterble is a hard-core tree hugger — she prefers to wield a golf club over a trowel. Using native plants and trees on their new riverfront property just seemed like the right thing to do.

"I've been into eating well and kind of living more softer on the Earth than other people do," said Winterble, a 66-year-old retiree. "I do believe in working with Mother Nature whenever possible."

When it comes to modest steps homeowners can take to shrink their footprint or live softer on the Earth, choosing a native plant over a non-native is one of the cheapest and easiest.

Yet the benefits can be enormous.

Native plants generally require less care, flourish better in the environment — it's their environment, after all — and are more adaptable to the region's weather extremes. No less important, they provide food, shelter and breeding ground to native wildlife that non-natives often can't, no matter how pretty or fragrant they may be.

Take the butterfly bush: Yes, it attracts native butterflies and will even nourish them with nectar. But when it comes to laying their eggs, native butterflies avoid the butterfly bush — it's from Asia.

"No native butterfly is going to recognize it as a larval host plant," said Robert Jennings, grassroots coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Charlottesville. "So if you want butterflies next year, you're not necessarily going to have them."

Instead, Jennings said, try the native Joe-Pye weed — it's about the same size and color, and because it's a native Virginian, Virginia butterflies adore it.

"I've seen some feed on it all day and literally sleep on the flower — almost like they're drunk," said Jennings.

Native plants are best suited to all kinds of wildlife, said Bruce Peachee, horticulture curator at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News.

"Native wildlife recognizes native plants, so there's already a relationship between them," Peachee said. "They generally don't have the knowledge and experience to deal with non-native exotic plants, so they may not recognize the fruit as food or it being an adequate cover — things of that nature."

The benefits of going native are even bigger when you look at the bigger picture: the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

When plants need less water and fertilizer, it means less phosphorus and nitrogen swept away in stormwater runoff. Runoff that ends up in the bay causes nutrient overload that fuels harmful toxic algae, which blooms into massive, oxygen-sucking "red tides" that suffocate aquatic life.

A single person planting Joe-Pye weed instead of a non-native perennial may make no difference. But if even a fraction of the 117 million people living within the 64,000-square-mile watershed from New York to Virginia went a little native, said Jennings, the difference would be immense.

If Winterble has any complaints about native plants in her half-acre patch, she said it's the relatively limited choice available at the time and the fact that some natives are very robust growers.

"What I'm whacking back right now are illicium — a shrub planted on my foundation," she said. "It just wants to grow and grow and grow. … I have to fight the goldenrod, which wants to grow everywhere, too."

But Jennings sees this as success breeding success.

"Black-eyed Susans, goldenrods — you want to fill in a space? Plant three of them and you'll soon have 30 of them," Jennings said. "If you don't want them, pull them out. But you have them for free if you want them."

Natives also tend to be far more tolerant of weather extremes.

"Last summer was scorching hot and dry, this summer cool and very wet," Jennings said. "But natives just keep on living."

They're also better at resisting predatory native insects.

"I never have to spray anything for bad insects," Winterble said. "Never have to fertilize — maybe the first year, but after that, no."

While Winterble might consider her plant choice limited, it's by no means small. Her planting plan includes arrowwood viburnum, , blueberries and Carolina jasmine. Plants that send out suckers include summer sweet, chokeberries and sweetspire.

Bearberry makes a nice groundcover, she says, and the sweetbay magnolia has smaller leaves and smaller growth habitat than its larger cousins.

Her perennial flowers include pink rose mallow, meadow beauty, seashore goldenrod and blue flag iris. And her ornamental grasses are a self-seeder called panic grass and a floppy one called little bluestem.